The present invention relates, in general, to the field of rotating data storage media. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for the production level screening of low flying magnetic heads in the manufacture of disk drive head disk assemblies (HDAs).
A partially cut-away, isometric illustration of a typical prior art disk drive HDA 10 is shown in FIG. 1. The HDA 10 includes a number of disks 12 which are rotated about a spindle 14 by means of a motor (not shown). An actuator motor 16 positions an arm 18 with respect to data tracks on the surfaces of the disks 12. The actuator arm, in turn, positions a suspension 20 and head 22 which flies adjacent to the rotating surfaces of the disks 12.
A disk drive read/write head generally comprises a read/write transducer and a slider that includes an air bearing surface (ABS). The ABS allows the slider to “fly” adjacent the surface of a rotating disk due to the development of an air bearing between the disk surface and the ABS. The slider is generally bonded to a thin metal arm, or suspension, that holds the head in position above or beneath the rotating disks. Typically, the combination of a head and suspension is called a head gimbal assembly (HGA) and multiple HGAs may be stacked together to form a head stack assembly (HSA). Functionally, the arms and heads of the HSA are positioned with respect to the respective disk surfaces during operation by means of an actuator or servo mechanism.
As mentioned previously, during normal operation, the read/write head is separated from the disk surface as it spins by a thin air bearing. The suspension serves to apply a force in a direction opposite to the pressure generated by the air bearing to maintain an equilibrium condition in which the transducer is separated from the disk surface by a small controlled spacing, to enable the reading and writing of data. If the desired equilibrium condition is disturbed, for example by excessive shock or vibration, or if the equilibrium condition is never established, for example due to component manufacturing variances, the head can crash into the disk surface. Not only can this damage the disk surface at that location, but debris from the crash site can cause further problems throughout the HDA.
As the areal density of disk drives increases, heads are required to fly lower and lower to the disk surface in order to read and write data. With current technology, this height can be below 0.5 micro-inches. In actual head production, there is often a variation in the fly heights of the heads in a given product due to process specific tolerances. Heretofore, most approaches have attempted to control and reduce the flying height variations (sigma) on a given lot, and from lot to lot. The variations may also be reduced by improved suspension design (e.g. low stiffness), the ABS design, and other manufacturing process controls that reduce fly height sensitivity to process specific tolerances.
To account for fly height variation, the ABS must be designed to fly slightly higher than would otherwise be desirable. The fly height resulting from an ABS design is typically determined by computer modeling and simulation based on the well-known Reynold's Equation. However such computer simulation results must be confirmed and calibrated by experimental testing of fly height.
In this regard, certain patents illustrating the current state of the art in making and using calibration disks to enable the testing of the flying heights of certain heads in a test environment include: U.S. Pat. No. 5,528,922 issued Jun. 25, 1996 for: “Method of Making Disk Bumps with Laser Pulses for Calibrating PZT Sliders”; U.S. Pat. No. 6,408,677 issued Jun. 25, 2002 for: “Calibration Disk Having Discrete Bands of Composite Roughness”; and U.S. Pat. No. 6,164,118 issued Dec. 26, 2000 for: “Calibration Disk Having Discrete Bands of Calibration Zones”. It should be noted that the subject matter of these specific patents is directed to testing (e.g., glide head calibration) in a test environment and not a production level screening technique as disclosed herein.